Labour's election manifesto in full (2024)

Labour unveiled its manifesto for ‘change’ yesterday – but provided scant detail about how it would achieve its aims.

Sir Keir Starmer’s blueprint was criticised as a ‘plan for a plan’ which promises a ‘dizzying number of reviews and strategies’.

The Tories said that despite Labour stating ‘the time for reviews is over’, it announced 16 new reviews in its manifesto, bringing the total number of audits the party has called for in recent years to a staggering 103.

Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said: ‘This is a manifesto that promises a dizzying number of reviews and strategies to tackle some of the challenges facing the country.

‘That is better than a shopping list of half-baked policy announcements. But delivering genuine change will almost certainly also require putting actual resources on the table.’ Meanwhile, charity Age UK said Labour’s social care pledges amounted to ‘a plan for a plan’ as it called for care workers to be paid more fairly. And Kate Dove, chairman of Momentum which was set up to campaign for Jeremy Corbyn, said its vows ‘fall short of what is needed to fix the Tories’ broken Britain’.

The 131-page document – which contained some 33 pictures of Sir Keir – contains pledges on the economy, the NHS, immigration, crime, education, Lords reform, the environment, housing and transport. On the economy, the party ruled out hiking income tax, national insurance and VAT and vowed to cap corporation tax at 25 per cent. But it did not rule out council tax revaluation, raids on capital gains tax or unfreezing fuel duty. It plans to raise £7 billion from tax and has committed to charging VAT on private school fees and abolishing the non-dom tax status.

On health, it promises to cut waiting lists with an extra 40,000 NHS appointments a week.

An extra 8,500 mental health staff will be recruited, funding increased for scanners and plans introduced to recruit new dentists. The party will also create Great British Energy, a state-owned clean power firm, funded by a windfall tax on oil and gas companies. It will invest in upgrades to five million homes to cut bills, and in grants and loans to homeowners.

Labour has also pledged to build an extra 1.5million new homes and bring back the 2030 deadline for a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles. It has also vowed to fix a million potholes a year. Taking rail contracts back into public ownership is another pledge.

Sir Keir also set out plans to recruit 6,500 teachers and aims to guarantee that all 18- to 21-year-olds have training, apprenticeships or help to find work.

The manifesto commits the party to boost defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP when economic circ*mstances allow. Labour will also back Ukraine against Russia and support recognising a Palestinian state.

Elsewhere, the party pledges to bring forward legislation to abolish hereditary peers and seek justice for victims of infected blood.

Lowering the voting age is 'attempt to rig system'

Labour will give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote, the party’s manifesto confirms.

In a bid to ‘increase the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy’, the voting age would be lowered for all elections.

The Tories last night accused Labour of trying to ‘rig’ the voting system – and warned that foreign citizens would be ‘next’.

Tory deputy chairman Jonathan Gullis said: ‘Keir Starmer is trying to rig the voting system to give him a blank cheque to do what Labour always does – raise your taxes. Under-18s cannot drink, serve on a jury, or get married. But yet Labour are all too happy to collect their votes.’

Changing gender to be made easier than ever

A pledge to make changing gender easier was branded ‘harmful’ last night amid warnings it will undermine women’s rights.

Labour has promised to ‘modernise, simplify, and reform the intrusive and outdated gender recognition law’.

Maya Forstater, boss of human rights charity Sex Matters, said the plans ‘are deeply worrying’ and ‘amount to self-ID through the back door’. Campaigners also warned that a pledge to ban ‘conversion therapy’ risked criminalising those who sought to treat children questioning their gender in a compassionate way.

Kate Barker, chief executive of the LGB Alliance, said: ‘Therapists should not be criminalised for exploring the reasons someone feels uncomfortable in their body.’

Rwanda axe is confirmed

The Rwanda asylum scheme would be abandoned, Labour’s manifesto states.

Money earmarked for the programme to remove illegal migrants, including cross-Channel small boat arrivals, would be used to fund a new Border Security Command.

This unit will feature ‘hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers and cross-border police officers’ and cost £75 million a year.

Business backlash over work rights shake-up

A law radically changing workplace rights will be introduced within the first 100 days of a Labour government, the party’s manifesto promises.

It will include banning ‘exploitative zero hours contracts, ending fire and rehire, and introducing basic rights from day one for parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal’.

But businesses last night joined the Tories to criticise the proposals. A senior business source told the Mail: ‘Labour is walking into a deteriorating jobs market with no idea what to do except pile costs and pointless paperwork onto businesses.’

Conservative small business minister Kevin Hollinrake said ‘French-style union laws’ will ‘hammer small businesses... destroying jobs alongside the £2,094 tax raid on hardworking families.’

Pledge to halve violent crime

Labour promised to ‘return law and order to our streets’ by halving knife crime and violence against women within a decade.

Third on the party’s ‘five missions to rebuild Britain’ is a pledge to ‘halve serious violent crime’, but the document appears to be short on detail of how this could be achieved. Vowing to restore ‘visible’ neighbourhood policing, Labour aims to recruit an extra 13,000 constables, and police and community support officers.

Equality plan panned as 'bonanza for lawyers'

New race equality laws first announced on the anniversary of George Floyd’s death would be brought in.

Labour’s manifesto reaffirmed a commitment to ‘enshrine in law the full right to equal pay for Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority people [and] strengthen protections against dual discrimination’.

It pledged to reverse a downgrading of ‘monitoring anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate’.

Labour would also introduce ‘dual discrimination’ under the plans whereby employees would be able to bring a single claim of, for example, sexism and racism if they feel they have been subject to both.

Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch blasted Labour’s plans as ‘a bonanza for dodgy, activist lawyers’.